Active Component

Veterans with family support have better functional recovery and reintegration outcomes. However, families’ ability to support the veteran with PTSD’s rehabilitation and reintegration oftentimes is hindered by interpersonal challenges.

While many Veterans experience reintegration without major problems, a sizable portion struggle with difficulties, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI), during the transition back to their families and communities following deployment.

Objective: The U.S. Air Force recently implemented system-wide changes that both (a) clarified the criteria used to determine when family maltreatment has occurred and (b) made the process by which these decisions are made more consistent.

Air Force child and spouse maltreatment reports were utilized to examine how the implementation of revisions to maltreatment criteria influenced overall rates of substantiation and one-year recidivism.

The present study describes the sources of Air Force (AF) Family Advocacy Program referrals (N = = 42,389) for child and spouse maltreatment between 2000 and 2004. Sources of referrals were stable over time, with military sources accounting for the majority of both child and spouse referrals.

Suspected child and spouse maltreatment reports were evaluated to determine referral source for Air Force families. Suspected Air Force child maltreatment reports were then compared to U.S. national child maltreatment data to explore how referral source differed among the samples.